


When Fear Came

by Fuzziestpuppy



Series: And Still a Garden [2]
Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Kyrat, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Established Relationship, Fairy Tale Style, Kalinag and His King, Kyrati Mythology, M/M, Romance, Shangri-la, hardship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 06:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18493642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: Despite the dangers that Kalinag faced in Shangri-La, it was only years later that he learned the true meaning of fear.  He tells a tale of how the rains failed, of how war threatened.  Of how love can never outweigh duty, and of courage in the face of overwhelming odds.





	When Fear Came

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a nod to Rudyard Kipling's story about another great drought, and a very different kind of fear.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you, [brokibrodinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokibrodinson/pseuds/brokibrodinson), [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss), and [Thegirlnamedhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegirlnamedhawk/pseuds/Thegirlnamedhawk) for being such wonderful beta readers. You guys really are the best.

***

 

In the Kyrat of long ago, the cycles of the year were of the utmost importance. The movements of wind and water, moon and sun; these were as the breath of the world, the life and health of the good earth. The big rains came twice a year and soaked that good earth and that was what made all life possible, from the humblest farmers in their fields to the King on his throne; the largest tigers all the way down to the tiniest mice…but the year of my ordeal in Shangri-La was a year in which the monsoon rains were unusually light.

This was worrisome, but common enough, and life went on much as usual. The land had her frivolities and they sometimes included a drier season or two. That same year Bhagan and I married to great fanfare, for he loved celebrations and festivals of all kinds, and the harvests had been good despite the dryness of the year. The next year the rains were lighter still, but arrived exactly when they should’ve, and the priests and farmers and wise women of the villages all breathed a sigh of relief.

But the year after that, my thirtieth summer, the rains failed to come at all.

Some blamed Bhagan and I for it and said that our unconventional union had somehow angered the gods. Some blamed me in particular, and one ugly little rhyme that made the rounds of the bazaar said that I should have stayed a _phojee_ , a soldier, and not become a _randee_ , a prostitute. My fellow warriors thought that this was the height of hilarity and would tease me with it, but I warned them of repeating it outside the warrior’s encampment. If Bhagan should catch wind of it and thought that one of them had started it, he’d cut the offender’s heads off himself and hang them on the big Palace gate. Or perhaps just bring back that old method of execution that involved the King’s war-elephant kneeling on a man until his innards popped and turned to mush. In any case, in such matters Bhagan was much like Hurli, his favorite elephant; ordinarily cheerful and perhaps even a little silly…until crossed. Then he was as an enraged tiger, terrible to behold. So if people had opinions on the matter they more or less kept them behind their teeth. However, for the most part the populace seemed relieved that the King now had an heir, for if he died with no one to set in his place, it would be difficult to prevent bloodshed. Perhaps even war.

No, most were merely puzzled but relieved that Bhagan now had both an heir and a consort to keep him happy, for all that I wasn’t his wife and certainly didn’t behave like one. What made perfect sense to he and I only confused everyone else, not that it mattered. But when the rains failed, all looked to the King and his strong new husband in desperation, pleading, looking to us for relief, for anything.

But there was so little we could do.

The brassy sun blazed down from a sky white with heat, beating down on nobles and commoners alike. The animals lay in the fields as if they were already dead, unwilling to leave the patchy and diminishing shade of withered trees. The farmers lay listless in their huts, too weak to work, although the heat had already killed the young crops.

By this time, the rains were three weeks overdue, and Bhagan had begun to pace restlessly in the evenings, to stare into the hot sky.

“Many times has this happened before…many times. It will break soon. All will be well,” he reassured me, but he looked off into the distance over the stubbly brown fields that should have been jewel green, gazed at the fountain that had run dry in his drooping garden, and I wondered which of us he was trying to convince.

But he was wrong in even that thin reassurance.

I often woke alone, out of a thin and restless sleep on account of the heat. I would roll over to see Bhagan standing on the balcony in what should have been the coolest part of the day, just before dawn, but the air was already as a furnace. He stood and watched the horizon lighten, that seam of gold erupting. And would turn away from it, his jaw clenched. Ramrod straight and imperious, he would give his back to it. Not once did he sing the sun up during that time. I think it was too painful for him. And that pain turned to anger, for she had become a malevolent and baleful presence, one he was unwilling to welcome.

One day, after a long evening of pacing the night before, Bhagan seemed to come to a decision. He ordered the servants to erect a large awning in the courtyard, under which were placed the large copper kettles that were used for the cooking at feasts and festivals. These he had the servants fill with bucketful after bucketful of good, cool water from the Palace well. As the kettles were being filled, Bhagan sent the warriors out to carry the message across the countryside: ‘Come, the King will give you all the water you can hold. If your neighbors be too weak, he lays a duty on you to either bring them or carry water back for them.’

I secretly doubted the wisdom of this plan: though the kettles were very large, how much of a difference could they make? How long until the water ran out and he put himself in jeopardy, weakening himself when the people needed him the most? Even covered from the sun, we would lose some of it to the hot, dry winds…and the villagers would have to stay until the rains came. They couldn’t waste their strength walking back and forth all the time.

I must have had some expression of doubt on my face, for the oldest woman in the Palace stopped to speak with me as she was walking by, a woman who had spent her entire life in service to the royal family. She must have seen at least seventy summers. “That well has never run dry, nor even gone muddy. Not in my lifetime…and not in my mother’s, either,” the servant assured me. “It comes from deep in the living rock.”

It only took an hour or so for the word to reach the nearest villages. And come the people did, at first only a trickle and then more and more, with buckets and bowls and skin bags and jars, whatever would hold the precious water. We designated one kettle for animals, although by then no one would have minded a little bullock spit. They had to be saved, for without their beasts the farmers could not plow, or haul their produce to market. It seemed cold, but in some cases they were as essential as the people. Thankfully we were not forced to choose between cattle and the weak and sick of the villages…but I wondered if it would come to it.

All that day, we hauled water from the big well in the cellar up the steps and across the dusty courtyard to refill the vessels, their sides beaded with precious moisture. Even Bhagan took his turn at the buckets, his sarong tucked up and with a cloth about his head like a farmhand, his shoulders growing pink and even more freckled in the merciless sun. And still the people came, some leaning on others, old people carried by their families, men supporting their wives with one arm while carrying babies too weak to even cry, their little faces shaded by a turn of their father’s sarong. All that day they came; streaming into the courtyard under the watchful eyes of a handful of warriors. As soon as the strongest saw their families settled they helped to haul water for the newcomers, to stretch canvas for shade, any cloth they could get their hands on pressed into service. The blankets from mine and Bhagan’s very bed sheltered a family from Naccarapur; it was not as if we had any need of them.

Every villager within a day’s walk that could make the journey came. They were that desperate, all the rivers and streams gone to tawny mud, all the little springs in the hills gone to muddy trickles, then nothing at all.

The brassy, blazing sun finally began creeping its way down the sky, stirring the hot wind that set the dead bamboo to clanking, and still they came. After full dark the warriors lit torches and helped the weakest up the short flight of steps to the courtyard, and one of the servants, the old woman who had told me the Palace well had never run dry in her life, stood out near the gates with a bucket and a dipper for the little children. Some were so desperate that a single draught of water was all that stood between them and death, and the sooner they got it the better.

By that time Bhagan and I were exhausted with cramped backs and knotted shoulders. The hide was nearly rubbed off his hands despite the calluses from weapons practice, the skin hot and blistered from the rope handles. Mine were hardly better. “Come, beloved,” I murmured to him. “There is no more we can do tonight,” and he followed me without a word. He had been quiet all evening.

The dark brought no real relief; only that hot wind that reminded me a little of that great metal eagle, and I shivered. I fetched two buckets for us myself; all the servants were more tired than we and I would not ask them to tend to our needs. As I did so I thought about what the woman had said and I certainly believed her, but I also wondered if whole villages had been drinking from it.

When I got back to our quarters Bhagan was seated at his writing desk still dusty and sweat-streaked, his skin flushed from the heat. He was ostensibly reading a book, the scroll laid out before him, but I could tell his mind wasn’t on it. He kept gazing out into the darkness of the garden.

I examined one of the big buckets I was carrying and made a decision, and dumped it carefully into the big bathing tub. One vessel only covered the bottom of it about three fingers-width in water, but that was enough. “Come,” I said again, taking his hand, careful of blisters. “Come, husband.”

Bhagan stood patiently and allowed me to remove his sarong and the aching weight of the solid gold King’s amulet he wore. The weight of it was a burden on him in more ways than one, as I hefted it onto its rack. He sucked in a deep breath, as if it were a cutting chain about his ribs rather than a millstone about his neck. His proud shoulders straightened a little, and I kissed one as I led him to the bath.

We lay down in the bottom of it together, he and I. The water was hardly cold, barely even cool by that point, but the temperature change was shocking against our hot skin. If we laid close together, there was just enough room. I sighed to feel his wet body slide against mine. For a month, it had been too hot to bear sleeping in each other’s arms as we were wont to do, and I missed it sorely. Too hot to sleep at all, some nights, and certainly too hot for lovemaking. This I sorely missed as well. I extended my arm so he could pillow his head on it, and he wriggled close and settled against me with a soft sigh of his own. I scooped up water with my free hand and bathed his poor burned shoulders, trickled it down his side and over his hip as he shivered a little from the tickling coolness.

“You’ve been so quiet today,” I murmured, rinsing the dust from his hair, and then gently brushing the dark strands out of his eyes. “I wish you’d tell me what troubles you, beyond the heat and hordes of villagers.” Even in here, if I listened closely, could I hear the lowing of cattle and the occasional raised voice. Eyes closed, he stirred against me and settled, getting comfortable, enjoying the relief of the cool water even as he frowned.

“Famine follows the great droughts…and make no mistake, this is one of the great ones,” he said against my wet skin. “I fear it is too late, far too late for the harvest, and that we are only seeing the beginning of true misery.” He wrapped an arm around me and drew me as close as he could, still not looking at me. He seemed to find it easier to speak that way. “Famine, and then disease, and death. Long ago, we had two good years, sweet boy. No, two incandescently happy years…” he trailed off at a whisper, and I held to him the tighter, beginning to understand. “And then gone. All of it gone…and I was so young, Ajay. Much younger than you are now, and I had not your strength, your resilience, to come through that ordeal unscathed.” I thought then of the sweating nightmares I still experienced sometimes, the stink of sulphur and hot iron in my dreams, but said nothing. “I broke, my Ajay, my Kalinag, I broke and I wept and I lashed out in anger…but with time I glued the pieces of myself together again. I found you, and these three years have been full of joy, full of your light. But here we are again. Am I fated, to always walk the same path?” He pushed his burning face into my throat, as he tended to do when he was upset. My heart ached for him. “I can’t…I can’t do it again, can’t lose you. It will be the end of me.”

“Bhagan, you said yourself that I am strong. As you are, as you are. Shangri-La itself couldn’t keep its hold on me, when you wished it otherwise. _You sang me back from death._ And then you asked me to stay. One can hardly argue with that,” I murmured against his ear, bathing what I could reach of his hot face with wet fingers. “Always, I said then…surely you remember. And I meant it. You won’t be rid of me that easily,” I said, striving for a bit of levity, hoping to at least get a smile from him.

What I got was his warm lips on mine, which never, ever failed to create that little jolt of sensation deep within me.

This I understood too, as we fought to wrestle closer, splashing a little…life. Life, in the face of death and fear. Love, as his hands shook against my skin, as I kissed the beads of moisture from the hollow of his throat, as his hard length slid against my hip. “Like this,” I said, “Yes, that’s it,” as I opened my thighs for him. Usually we strove together for that peak, but I wanted this to be all for him, wanted to watch him lose himself in it without having to worry about my pleasure. He held my face between his hands and gazed deeply into my eyes as he rocked slowly against me, and I tightened my legs to make it better for him. His own eyes kept wanting to close, half-drugged with pleasure as his slow, languid pace began to speed up, as his breathing quickened, cheeks and chest and lips flushed with excitement instead of only the brutal heat. His eyes were dark pools of arousal, pupils already drawn wide. I held him and drank in his panting breaths, his wet skin sliding cool against mine…cool but for the place I held him.

I smiled against his lips. “Come for me,” I whispered, as he shuddered and trembled and obeyed me. I held him tightly and could feel him throbbing and pulsing and spilling warmly between my thighs, again and again, as I muffled his panting moans with my own mouth.

Finally all the tension ran out of him and he rested against me, sated and smiling just a little, a soft, sweet little smile. Only I got to see that smile, and I treasured them. “I love you, dear boy,” he murmured against my skin. He seemed to have forgotten all about what had upset him, exactly as I planned. I touched his essence on my skin and brought my fingers to my mouth while he watched, as he shook his head and chuckled. He tasted of salt and the sweetness of the mangoes we’d eaten that morning along with just a hint of bitterness, and some unnameable quality that was his alone. He tasted of _life_ , and all good things.

I thought he might curl against me and sleep for a bit, there where it was cool, but instead he ran his fingertips down my chest, down my belly, until they brushed against me teasingly. “Oh? What’s this then,” he said with a wicked little grin, as he pushed me onto my back, as he moved with a groan that was much less about pleasure and much more about stiff muscles and exhaustion.

“Bhagan, you don’t have to…”

“Hush,” he said. “Perhaps I would like a taste as well,” as he unceremoniously crammed himself at the bottom of the bath between my legs before taking me in his mouth. He pinned my hips with his forearms just as I liked it, letting his weight rest heavily, warmly across my lower half. He held me down until I was vibrating under him, heightening my pleasure, and I shuddered with a muffled cry.

I just laid there for a few moments in the water, drifting with my vision grayed out. After some unknown time Bhagan’s face hove into view, wearing a rather self-satisfied expression. He propped himself over me and kissed me slow and deep, and we each tasted of the other.

We did end up drowsing there for awhile, holding fast to each other, both of us exhausted by the work and the heat and short sleep. That combined with our coupling ensured that neither of us were willing to make the effort of climbing out just yet. The water was like a balm, lulling me in and out of sleep. After a time, I actually began to feel a little cool despite the fever heat of the room, cool to the middle of me, and I laughed in delight. Bhagan rolled over in the loose circle of my arms and smiled drowsily at me. “I should think I would be able to sleep now,” he murmured. “Perhaps eat a bit. Are you hungry, darling?” I thought about it and decided that I could probably eat something, but eating made me think of drinking, and I felt a sudden stab of guilt.

“I think I could but…perhaps we shouldn’t have taken our pleasure in water that honest farmers might have had to drink,” I confessed, still not quite willing to climb out of it even as I squirmed a bit in consternation.

Bhagan propped himself on an elbow. “Hmm, well…I can see what you mean. But surely it’s not that dirty? Perhaps we might scoop it back out and…”

“By Kyra, no. Even if we hadn’t… _no_. I think we washed off half the courtyard into it. We can water the garden or something.”

Bhagan frowned. Then his face brightened. “No, I have a better idea!” With a grunt of effort he hoisted himself up and made it to a standing position with a pained groan, and was gone in a spray of droplets. I hoped that if he were planning on going out into the courtyard for some reason that he remembered to at least wrap something about himself. I had every intention of getting out myself as I heard him speaking quietly to one of the servants, but my eyelids closed again before I could muster the energy for it.

I woke to something leathery and slightly sticky brushing at my face, and I opened my eyes and almost cried out. Hurli looked down at me with one small brown eye and what could only be described as an elephantine smile as he snorted a greeting and then began sucking up my bath water with relish. Him and the four other elephants housed in the royal stables were on short rations, and an elephant’s water needs were enormous. I figured that was my cue to get out, as I stood on trembling legs. Bhagan chuckled and handed me a cloth from the stack. He did indeed have another wrapped about his waist. Before Hurli could drink it all, he scooped a little, a very little water into a pan to take out to his birds.

“A clever solution, for sure,” I said, climbing out of the bath, “but definitely not one that would have occurred to me, to bring an elephant into the house.”

Bhagan looked at him with fondness. “Clumsy, but oh-so adorable. He nearly didn’t fit through the door. His _mahout_ had to persuade him in, bribe him with banana leaves.”

Another problem with elephants is that they love to bathe, so much so that they’d almost rather wash than drink. As Hurli demonstrated with his last half-trunkful, slinging it over his back and liberally spraying the room with dirty water and probably not a small amount of elephant snot. “Oh, you fiend! Out, out,” Bhagan cried, herding him out through the open porch and into the garden, where there was still some drooping greenery that he could eat. Happy trumpeting emanated from somewhere near the back wall when he discovered it. Bhagan came back in dusting his hands and shaking his head.

Often after we had eaten dinner, we would lay together on the cool tile of the porch and watch the stars come out, like diamonds strewn over a dark cloth. “Much finer than any trifling jewels I own,” he’d say with a smile. But now the tiles beat their absorbed warmth into our backs and the stars were obscured by heat haze and dust, the constant and irritating dust that lay everywhere, that set the eyes to watering and that everyone coughed up in the mornings. At least Hurli was enjoying himself, as we listened to him rustle and chomp his way through the wilted shrubbery.

Frustrated by even that simple pleasure denied us, we went to bed where we held each other’s hands and shifted restlessly through the hot night, though it was better than before. I eventually slept with Bhagan’s fingers woven through my hair, my own touching his side.

The next morning, we got up and did it all over again.

 

I wish I could say that things grew better after that. That the heat broke, that the rains came, that the courtyard weren’t full of well over a hundred villagers that strained the Palace’s resources of stored food and medicine, that tempers didn’t flare and there weren’t fights over petty matters by people grown desperate. That Bhagan didn’t seem to age ten years in as many days from stress and heartache. I wish I could say that these things weren’t so. For very, very little would I have loaded Hurli with as much food and water as he could carry and taken Bhagan with me into the mountains, up into the cool forests and the perpetual snow to wait it out. I had grown that desperate, that frightened of what lay ahead. My courage was a warrior’s courage, bold in the face of an enemy that I could do battle with, that I could strike down…but I was unaccustomed to this slow and grinding and helpless _fear._ But I did not even mention such a plan, for Bhagan would never have left. And I would not leave him, never again. He had a finer, steadier courage than mine, the courage to stand fast. To wait, immovable and implacable.

I watched Bhagan’s broad shoulders droop minutely throughout each brassy, dusty day, until he nearly slumped over the dinners that he but picked at, the single cup of water he allowed himself. We would go to bed, tossing and turning throughout the stifling night. He would rise again the next morning, would straighten his shoulders and his back as if he’d had a fine night’s sleep, as if all were well, would take up the weight of the King’s medallion again, and face another day with a bravery that I envied.

So we watched, and we waited, while even the swampy _terai_ around Banapur Village turned wilted and brown, and I added fire to my list of worries. The scouts Bhagan dispatched reported back that they had seen no water at all, not a single pool in three days walking distance of the Palace; the furthest villages were surviving with wells that were reportedly drying up. Even the deep lake at Jalendu, ordinarily fed by northern snowmelt, had so dried in the intense heat that it was no more than a squelching plain of mud that wolves and tigers and rhinos did battle over. All were made weak and desperate by their thirst. We could all go without food for many, many days, but everything from the smallest lizard to the largest bull elephant must drink, and drink regularly.

They also reported seeing ragged bands of men crossing the border near Tirtha Village, probably from the Kingdom of Purun to the south. Roving bandits were one thing, but if they were organized under a leader with banners, it was a declaration of war that must be answered. One more weight on Bhagan’s mind, one more issue tying up resources we could ill afford.

And then one day, one of the servants cried out, and brought a bucket of water to show Bhagan with sharp fear in his eyes. He held the bucket out for us to see with hands that trembled…for there was a tiny bit of mud in the bottom of it.

Bhagan looked into it, looked long…and called for the executioner’s blade with sorrow in his eyes.

 

We both knew this day would come. His elephants required prodigious amounts of water and there were five of them in all. A man might, if he stayed in the shade and did nothing, be able to get by on a _chungah_ of water a day. If he had to work hard in the heat, he needed double that to prevent him from sickening. The women with babies that they needed to provide milk for, likewise. But an elephant needed to drink one hundred times that, every single day. And half the time they’d slosh it over themselves, being animals and not understanding shortages, and being accustomed to living in the stables and always having as much water as they liked. Perhaps the wild elephants understood better as they watched their watering holes dry up. But we could not merely turn them loose; there was no water, no feed for them in a three-day radius. To turn them out to fend for themselves only meant a slow, cruel death…and Bhagan was not a cruel man. To his enemies, perhaps, but those elephants he adored. They were also an important resource, his mounts in war, and they had been trained for decades for that purpose.

But we had grown truly desperate.

He would allow no other to perform that task. He took the blade, a long, wickedly curved affair and honed it himself, would wield it himself. His beasts trusted him and were accustomed to the smells of blood and death. They wouldn’t be afraid. He would make it quick; a clean, easy death, much better than dying of lack of drink. A truly terrible death, one that might still await he and I.

He still wept while he did it, and I had to stand there and do nothing to help him, my fists clenched.

The priests framed it as a sacrifice to the gods, to ask them to intercede on our behalf to bring the rains again. But all assembled knew that our gods were gentle ones, not desiring of blood and death to appease them. We were not a pack of Yalung worshippers, to bathe the temple steps in blood. But telling the people that the King’s elephants were to be sacrifices was better than to admit that the water was running out and causing them to panic. We should have made our hearts harder and done it earlier. But Bhagan loved them, and to watch him hide the big blade behind his back and greet them affectionately as he always did twisted my heart. To watch him rest his forehead against their faces for a moment before he brought the blade up under their throats where they couldn’t see it and make the quick drawing cut. Standing in such a way, he was soon soaked in it…and still they came to him, trusting him that much. It was so hot that day that the blood sizzled as it ran over the stones.

After it was done, the villagers quietly, respectfully came forth to butcher the bodies and divide up the precious meat that would feed everyone. I could tell he wept by the set of his mouth, the set of his shoulders, his clenched jaw. I don’t know if anyone else knew, and I ached to go to him and hold him. But ceremony divided us. I walked with him, however, walked at his side as he held his head high, bloodstained and still carrying that great sword. I walked with him into the temple, and when we reached the inner chambers and stopped Bhagan held himself rigid, his hands white-knuckled. The priests tried to take the blade from him, and something about that pushed him to his limit. He whirled, and with a bellowed roar flung it as hard as he could into the furthest corner, where it clanged and sparked off the stones. The sound was shockingly loud as it echoed off the walls. His chest heaving, he dropped his face into his bloody hands.

“Leave us,” I barked at the priests and they scrambled to obey. But I had no words of comfort for him. I couldn’t even bring him water to let him wash the blood from his body. Even that small comfort I couldn’t provide. I stood helplessly as he roughly wiped his face on the inside of his elbow and turned without a word and strode back to the Palace.

I found him out in the garden, using the dust to clean himself as well as he could, to even out the tear tracks on his face. He’d brought Hurli up with him from the now empty stables and the big elephant stood over him protectively. His trunk touched the back of Bhagan’s neck as he knelt there in the dirt, a part of his heart he couldn’t bring himself to kill. His little green parrot sat on his head, running its beak through his dusty hair. I stood there and watched as he scoured himself roughly, angrily, still not looking at me. “I shouldn’t keep him. I _shouldn’t,_ ” he muttered darkly, and I couldn’t tell if it were to me or merely to himself that he spoke. “Not when the old people are sacrificing themselves. ‘I think I’ll go for a bit of a walk,’ they say to their families, and go off and wait to die in the forest.” He flung a handful of grit onto his chest and scrubbed as hard as he could and it hurt me to even watch him be so rough with himself. But I was not sure if he noticed me there, or even wanted me, so deeply and obviously miserable that I had no idea how to approach him. “But I might need you yet,” he said, as he reached up and stroked the soft end of Hurli’s trunk. So gentle, when he refused to give himself the same courtesy. “One last hurrah, eh? You and I may still have a use yet, down at the border with the banners all streaming…just like old times,” and the hair stood up on the back of my neck to hear him speak thus.

Something in me snapped; the culmination of everything. My frustration, my anger at the world for doing this to us, my helpless, endless _fear_ that I had grown so mightily sick of.

“Do I mean _nothing_ to you?” I bellowed in turn, and he jerked, startled. His parrot squawked in reproach and winged its way up to the dried stick that was once a flowering vine. So lost in himself, he really didn’t realize I had been standing there. I don’t even know why I said it. He told me he loved me, he _showed_ me he loved me, each and every day. And I loved him, more than anything did I love him. But he still saw himself as a sacrifice, and I had built up a fine head of steam. “You’d leave me to go off and…and die, and leave me alone here to be the King? The King of what? A dead land? Dying villagers? We should have gone into the mountains a month ago. Do you not think that I too long for death in battle, and not this…this honorless _withering?”_ I spat it at him in my misplaced rage, and he stiffened.

“I had thought that I could rely on thee, Kalinag,” he said formally, with deep bitterness, as he never was with me. “It was a weight off my heart, to know that if anything happened to me that I leave all that we have cared for in better hands than my own. A weight off, I say, when so much else sits heavily on me.” He lifted his too-hard, too-thin face to mine and his eyes glittered with unshed tears. “You know the law as well as I. When our borders are threatened, the King must be the one to meet it…and Kalinag, you know more than most that love can never trump duty.” He bowed his head again, unwilling to look at me anymore as he addressed his knees. “Go. Draw as much food and water as you need and go where you like. I won’t hold you. I would never force you to stay with me.”

_Stay, stay with me._

_Yes. Always._

“What is the _matter_ with us,” I cried. “I would never leave you…but I cannot bear the thought of you leaving me, going off to battle without me at your side, weakened and knowing good and well that I may lose you…gods!” I paced in my agitation.

“Now you know just how I felt, back then,” he said simply, quietly, with so much weariness and pain in the lines of his face. “Watching you grow weaker and weaker, unable to do else but hold you and kiss you goodbye. Watching you leave and wondering if _this_ would be the time that I lost you.”

I threw myself to my knees in front of him and pulled him into my arms. “I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered in his ear. “Whatever you need of me, I will do it. I am so sorry, Bhagan. I am so very, very sorry,” as we knelt there in Hurli’s immense shadow, sweating onto each other. He was stiff at first…and then slumped against me, all but limp.

“It may not come to it,” he said heavily. “It may be that those fools will decide that things are just as bad on our side of the border and march home again. They must be more desperate than we are.” He rubbed his nose against my earlobe. “Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after the scouts should be back. I’ll make a decision then.”

The two warriors he sent out to observe and report back came in the early part of the night the next day. They brought with them what we least wanted to hear: the incursion turned out to be a fairly organized band under the banner of Purun, no mere bandits or deserters. Worse, they had attempted to raid Tirtha. One of the larger villages and one that had worried us the least, as the village elders had reported that their well was holding with care, and that they had food in plenty. The villagers had managed to beat them off, but none knew how long they could hold against trained men desperate for resources.

Bhagan ordered the warriors and the strongest village levies to assemble at the gate within the hour, and went to see to Hurli himself, who had more or less taken up residence in our garden. He stood there for a long time murmuring soft words into his great ear, and then merely leaned against him, a loop of Hurli’s trunk about his wrist. He had not had any sleep that night.

I fetched his second-best sarong and a gaily decorated sash along with his kukri as he shaved with a bit of oil, as he carefully reapplied the kohl around his eyes. I helped him with the sarong myself, lamenting how tightly I had to wrap the fine silk to get it to stay around him. He was quiet, as he always was these days. I missed his cheerful chattering, him going on happily about whatever came into his head at the moment. Much like his little parrot. I missed him playing the sitar in the cool evenings for me, and I so missed his voice raised in song, rolling strong and beautiful over the green lands. I leaned my head against his shoulder for a moment.

“Go and do what you need to do, and _come back_ to me,” I whispered to him, just as he had said to me years ago. His face was haggard with lines of strain, and I knew that mine probably looked no better, but he smiled for me, one of those sweet little smiles that were only for me. He took my face between his hands and kissed me long and soft, and it did not have the air of finality about it. Just a man kissing his beloved, just to show me how much he loved me. I couldn’t get enough of the taste of his mouth, holding him and meeting his lips with mine again and again.

As he led Hurli out the side door, I filled a waterskin with his ration for the day…and added my own to it. I would quickly sicken without enough water, but I could go one day without. When he had climbed up to Hurli’s back I handed the skin up to him and he shot me a sharp look at the heft of it. “Much too much,” he muttered, even as he took a small sip and recorked it.

“Oh, but I have naught to do tomorrow but lie in the shade and eat rice and dates. Isn’t that so?” I said airily, imitating his manner. He snorted at me and shook his head with a chuckle. He leaned down, and there was a little of that old sparkle in his eye, a little dark fire in them.

“Ride with me for a bit, Ajay, at least down to the gates,” he said with a boyish grin. “Just as we used to.”

With a grin of my own, I clambered aboard. Bhagan had replaced the gold caps on Hurli’s tusks with the spiked iron ones but had left off the great war-saddle, not wanting to burden him more than he must. He too had grown gaunt, but he raised his head and trumpeted to the hot dark night.

As soon as I settled my weight on Hurli’s neck Bhagan pulled me back against his chest. Much too warm for it, but there was nowhere else I would rather be than resting there with his arms about me, with his chin hooked over my shoulder. The touch of his bare skin against mine helped to loosen some of that tightness in my chest. I laid my hands over his and relaxed into him with a sigh as Hurli shuffled down the path at his slowest pace, stopping now and then to see if there might still be anything good to eat in the gardens that we passed.

Too soon, too soon, the Palace gates hove into view, illuminated by many torches. The point that I must part from him, but things felt easier between us than they had for awhile. I think he was so glad to be finally doing _something_ that it cheered his heart. Most of the warriors and perhaps a quarter of the villagers were assembled there. Everyone was quiet, with none of the bawdy songs that usually accompanied such trips, the chaos of forgetting this small item or that one, calls for someone to run back up to the barracks to fetch them.

No, they stood quietly watching as we rode up. But I didn’t let that stop me from turning carefully in his arms to cup his face with my hands and kiss him again until we were both breathless, until our hearts were pounding against each other where our chests were touching. I pressed my forehead to his and breathed in his breath, the smell of sweat and dust and _him,_ and like back then I stored up those memories as armor, as talismans to hold to in the middle of the dark night.

“Come back to me,” I whispered again, this time against his mouth.

He pulled back just a little to look at me with his dark eyes sparkling, a flush across his cheekbones and lips that had nothing to do with the temperature. For very little would I have dragged him off of Hurli’s back and had him right then and there, heat or no heat, observers or no. A mad impulse, but I could see the same desire in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said, with that soft smile. “Always.”

And in that moment, I believed him.

I turned and slid down Hurli’s wrinkled side as the banners went up with a cheer, the blue and snowy white of Kyrat herself, the deep red of the House of Minh, Bhagan’s personal banner. Even then, after everything he was magnificent, straight-backed and strong and with the torchlight glinting off the gold threads in his sash, the great medallion about his neck.

And he was right; it was cruelly hard to be the one left behind. I stood helplessly and watched him go down that road without me, and to his credit he only looked back twice.

 

Tirtha Village was not far, a journey of perhaps a day, a day and a half at the slowest pace. And I knew they must go slowly; the village levies were unaccustomed to hard running like the warriors, and all would be slowed by the brutal heat. I knew this in my head and strove for patience, but in my heart I longed for him so much that I paced and sweated when I should have laid still in the shade. I stood on our balcony and examined the sky with care for any sign, any wisp of cloud, but it remained a flat white that reminded me of a dead thing’s eyes. I monitored the water situation, as it was becoming abundantly clear that we were quickly running out. The servants now had to filter it through cloths, carefully poured from one bucket to another to get the mud out of it. I ordered two of the warriors that remained to assist them and they doled it out one dipperful at a time, pouring it with care so that not a single drop was wasted, and the plow animals simply had to do without. I worried for Bhagan and his tiny, thirsty army. I only hoped that Tirtha had water to spare for them. I hoped Hurli wouldn’t die under him.

Those days passed with aching slowness, fear my constant companion. I could not force myself to eat, not even cold rice. I gave a small handful to Bhagan’s birds and took the rest of my portion out into the courtyard for the children. A young mother of the villages touched my arm. “I too long for my husband, Prince Kalinag, but I have hope that yours will bring him back safe. Thank you for the food.” I had no words to say to that, distracted and heartsore as I was, so I merely patted her fingers. As I did so the peace was shattered as yet another fight broke out, the third or fourth that day. The potter of one village argued with the weaver of another, and the two men came to blows over some entirely trifling matter. I strode over and thrust them apart with anger boiling up in me, real rage that was difficult to reign in.

“Fools, fools, the lot of you,” I snarled, and even that hurt my heart, for it was so like something he would say. “I don’t know why the King didn’t take the two of you with him, if you have the strength to be swinging at each other. Go and help the servants, ingrates! Can you not see how exhausted they are?” I shoved them both toward the servant’s quarters, turned, and went back inside the Palace, done with them. I laid down on the bed and pulled Bhagan’s pillow over to me and held to it. I smelled his good scent in the cloth and tried not to cry, for I could not afford to lose the water.

On the fourth day I woke with a terrible headache, as if I had drunk too much strong wine. Lack of sleep, of water, of food…I didn’t know the cause, as I sat up and rubbed at it. I took a tiny sip of water, holding it in my mouth for a long time before I swallowed but it didn’t help, so I tried to ignore it as I went about my work for the day.

Later that afternoon, as I stood on the balcony watching the hateful sky, I saw a great plume of dust on the horizon, made tiny by the distance. My heart leapt up into my throat, for it was either Bhagan come home at last or a force meaning to attack us, and only time would tell which it was. I took up my kukri and my shield and spear and called for the handful of warriors that Bhagan had left behind for defense to do the same. Each could fight as three ordinary men. We stood watching by the gate, for the land dipped and rolled in such a way that ensured a force of any size was funneled and must use the road, and we intended to hold it. The vanguard moved slowly up the last rise and came into view, still small with distance…and I spotted Hurli surrounded by our men and sagged in relief. But something was wrong. Bhagan wasn’t on his back.

I wanted to run, run to meet them as quickly as I could, but I forced myself to the same slow pace and to stay to the shady side of the road. My head still ached mightily, almost swimming.

Those last hundred _haath_ or so where I could see Bhagan as he appeared out of a roll in the land, could see him weaving in his steps with his hand on Hurli’s elbow, the big elephant also weaving and near collapse…to see him so, and still force myself to walk was one of the hardest things. Painful, a clenching in my belly to match my head. Sometimes, even months later I would dream of it and it was as if I moved through mud trying to reach him, and I would never get there. He was always just out of my grasp, waves of heat from the hot roadway nearly obscuring him.

But of course that isn’t how it really happened at all. I did finally reach him that long, brutally oven-like afternoon; it just took an achingly long time. I think it was even hotter that day than it had been in all that long and terrible and waterless season.

Our eyes locked on each other, hands reaching out. Three strides, then two, then one, and he was in my arms. He made a hoarse sound against my throat and then his mouth was on mine. Dirty and bloodied and wounded, with his face nearly gray with exhaustion under the sunburn, he looked terrible…but I had him back, whole under my hands. Whole, and not so badly injured. My eyes quickly spotted the dried blood matted in his hair from a cut on his head, the spear wound that appeared to have gone clean through the meat of his upper arm, the livid bruising on his ribs. A myriad of cuts and scrapes and bruises all over him, but at least the blood all down one side of his sarong didn’t appear to be his. The wound in his arm was the worst, and without being able to bathe his injuries all had fever in them already…but he was all right. Would be all right. “You came back to me,” I murmured.

“You sound surprised, dear boy. I did say I would, did I not,” and his voice was as rough and ragged as the rest of him, but his tone was playful, almost teasing. I pulled his good arm across my shoulders and walked with him so he could lean on me, and the feel of his skin against mine made the very world seem brighter. In that moment, despite everything…we were all right.

“How goes things at home,” he said very quietly, pitched so only my ears could hear.

“Well enough…but nearly out of water. Very nearly out. Perhaps a day…two at the outside, I should think,” I said, equally quietly.

“I feared that you had run out entirely. We brought what Tirtha could spare us. It isn’t much,” he admitted, gesturing at Hurli, and I now saw that he was loaded down with waterskins. “We all drank deeply and came home as quickly as we could.” I glanced back along the line of march, counting heads…and not one of our warriors did Bhagan lose, not a single one of the village levies. He brought every one of them home again. Some limped, like my friend Acheh on Hurli’s other side, others were sorely wounded indeed…but all were here, all well enough to walk.

“Kalinag, he was _magnificent_ ,” Acheh piped up cheekily. He was never one for reverence. Bhagan waved a hand modestly to show that it had been as nothing, but Acheh went on. “King Minh drove his elephant right into the mass of the enemy, his tusks scything this way and that, throwing men high into the air. And the the King dove onto the enemy leader from Hurli’s back like…like a shining fish leaping, like a leopard dropping from a tree. I’ve never seen the like! I don’t think their commander had either, for he acted as if he didn’t quite know what had struck him!”

I looked at Bhagan sidelong. “Reckless, is what it sounds like. You’re lucky you didn’t land on his very blade.”

“Well,” he said ruefully, “it may have happened that way a little,” as he ran his fingers gingerly along the cut on his head. “I was merely trying to end it quickly. None of us had the strength for a long fight.”

Acheh went on excitedly. “Once King Minh made his strike the two of them rolled savagely on the ground, blades flashing. But the interlopers…no better than bandits, I say…they crowded in and tried to kick him and stab at him with spears!” I was appalled. This went against any convention of warfare we recognized. The leaders had the right to single combat and many battles were decided thus, without the loss of many lives. It was his right, and to think of them _kicking_ him… “But not to worry, Bagh and I made short work of _them_ ,” he said, teeth bared a little.

“No matter, no matter at all now,” Bhagan said peaceably. “They’re all bloating in the sun, dead to the last man, and the crows and kites are having themselves a merry feast. Whereas all of us are in sight of home again.” He chuckled a little.

A great cheer went up as we came in sight of the gates, as all the villagers had come to welcome them home. Everyone wanted to greet Bhagan; to reach and touch his hand was permitted and they all wanted to. I could see he was enjoying the attention but he was dead on his feet, deliriously tired. “Make way,” I finally had to shout. One arm around Bhagan and the other leading Hurli with a grip on his tusk, I finally got us to the courtyard as the warriors held the crowds back. “Get the water unloaded and under cover,” I yelled to no one in particular, but people rushed to obey. “Where is Hurli’s _mahout_? Care for him, make sure he gets perhaps ten _chungah_ of that water. He deserves it for hauling it all back.”

With those matters taken care of, I walked Bhagan into our quarters as the sun mercifully sank below the horizon, and I had him lay down in the garden while I fetched some water. We were all down to a half- _chungah_ a day; with the water that Bhagan brought we might be able to last two or three more days. The cattle bleated piteously in the courtyard, begging for the water they could smell. Children cried. I stank, everyone stank from lack of bathing. If anything it seemed even hotter as I carried the bucket back, the throbbing, sickening pain in my head making me wince from the last of the light.

I thought Bhagan was asleep as he was lying where I left him, his big rawboned hands folded on his sadly hollow belly. My own hands looked much the same, both of us large men gone to sinew and stringy muscle. He opened his eyes and smiled as I knelt beside him with a basin and used a tiny bit of our water to clean his wounds as best I could. He winced and swore softly but didn’t flinch as I cleaned his arm and dressed it with ointment. When I was finished I set the bucket down with a cup nearby. He sat up and propped himself against the hot stones of the fountain as we both peered into the bucket at our ration. It was truly a pitiful amount. I could have drunk it all myself, that amount five times over I could have gladly drunk. We pondered what to do, as families all over the Palace were doing. Drink it all now and hope for some miracle tomorrow? Attempt to stretch it further, and grow weaker and sicker but perhaps eke out a few more days? At least we didn’t have children to think of. The parents had to take that into account too. Drink it and stay strong to care for them, or give it all? How much privation could a child bear before they weakened past the point of no return?

These thoughts were too depressing as I slumped down and rested my head against his leg. My head hurt too badly to think. Let Bhagan drink it all. My stomach roiled with nausea.

He stroked his fingers through my hair. “I am so proud of you,” he said softly.

“Me? All I did here was break up fights while you were off being _magnificent._ Oh, Acheh! Please forgive his impudence. But…I do wish I could have seen you, for the picture in my head is beautiful. You _are_ magnificent.” I grinned, even as it hurt. The very bones of my face felt as if they were throbbing under the skin and a pained sound escaped me.

“Your friend Acheh can say what he likes, for he is one of the finest fighters I have ever seen.” And then at my utterance: “What is the matter? Am I hurting you somehow?” His fingers stilled their stroking.

“No, no, not at all. It’s just that my head aches terribly. It has all this day.”

“Come up here,” as he tugged at me. “I care not that it is as if we sit in a furnace. By Kyra, I wish to hold my own husband…damn this heat!” I still felt a little thrill even as the years passed to hear him call me so. I ran my finger over the pale stripe on his finger where his wedding band usually sat. He had commissioned a metalworker to carefully, carefully remove one golden ornament from the royal amulet and make two rings from it, but it would be too easy for us to lose them now. They sat together in a jeweled box on his writing desk. We’d grow strong again soon and would be able to wear them; to think any differently was unbearable.

I squinted my eyes shut, my thoughts becoming a little erratic from the pain as the heated wind blew dust all over us and Bhagan coughed a little. I wished I could sing to him, that I had the slightest skill at it. If I had, I would have sung him home this afternoon, like he did all those times for me. A relic of happier times. I rested my head on his chest and wished I could sing to him for comfort, for hope.

Perhaps I couldn’t sing, but I could hum. I held him and stroked his side and hummed the melody of that song to him, Banashur’s song. My eyes watered with pain, but I held to him and we comforted each other, the sky beginning to grow dark. He coughed the dust out of his lungs and took up that melody and sang to me, low and resonant in his chest. It was a cracked and ragged and sad sound, but still he sang, and it was still so beautiful to me. He sang the verses about Banashur creating the high mountains with their ever-present snows, and I closed my eyes and concentrated on that, held fast to memories of that crisp air, of seeing my breath, of him and I riding Hurli warm and safe with a turn of his sarong wrapped around the both of us. I could almost feel that coolness on my sweaty skin.

Suddenly the pain in my head reached a fever pitch, immense and terrifying. I rolled away from him and scrambled away on my hands and knees to vomit. All that came up was bile. While I could feel his hands on me, running up my back and trembling a little, I couldn’t make out what he was saying through the stuffed roar in my head, an immense pressure as if it were packed tightly with cloth. His hand appeared in front of my streaming eyes, cupped and filled with water. He held it to my lips and I drank gratefully, washing the taste from my mouth. He petted my hair with his other hand, wiped my tears away with his fingers, and trembled with worry as I heaved for air and tried to keep that tiny bit of water in my stomach where it belonged.

He needn’t have worried, for in that moment the very air around us cracked with a sound of doom. We both jerked and shook in fear this time as we held each other. The wind gusted for a moment, scorching hot, and then came another of those immense cracking explosions…and this one brought with it a blast of cool air and the faintest, faintest whiff of water and stone.

We clung to each other there by the fountain as the sky opened with a sound like an immense cloth tearing, and with a great roar the rain came down on us as if Kyra herself were pouring it from a jar, shockingly cold. Instantly that pain evaporated like it never was, that terrible squeezing pressure gone, and I sagged against him in a euphoric relief so great I thought I might pass out. I looked at Bhagan, blinking the streaming water from my eyes, looked into his stunned face. His eyes crinkled as if he might laugh…but instead he sobbed. I pulled him close as he sobbed again and again, great harsh, racking sobs that sounded ripped out of him as his chest heaved, as his tears mixed with the rain.

My own tears ran as well, but it mattered not at all. I knew exactly how he felt, for did I not experience the same at Durgesh? That feeling of overwhelming relief after so much struggle and pain and hardship, the weight of worlds on my shoulders suddenly removed. I kissed his ear and murmured into it that I loved him, that I was so proud of him and to lean on me, that I had him and we had each other, always and always.

As I held to him I tipped my head back and squinted my eyes shut and drank that water, drank and drank until I could hold no more. Bhagan did the same, the both of us on our knees in the mud with our arms about each other. It felt as if my very body were soaking it up like the withered plants around us.

And then came joy, as we laughed like children, as that quenching rain thundered down on us. In that rush of water, of _life_ , we laughed for longer than we had wept.

It poured the rain for nearly five glorious weeks.

 

For many days, we did nothing but sleep and stuff ourselves on whatever the kitchen staff saw fit to make as they applied themselves to the pots and ovens with enthusiasm. We poured water in the fancy gold dinner goblets like it was fine wine, and it tasted every bit as good as that wine Bhagan had given me at my Naming ceremony. This too was flavored with triumph, but now it was ours together. That ceremony had made me his, my blood across his chest, the Name he gave me on everyone’s lips. But our other ceremony had made him mine, as I went to his desk and retrieved our rings and slid his onto his finger and kissed him long and sweet, just as I had that day.

The whole Palace has the air of a festival as people danced in the rain and the children raced and played through the puddles. Bhagan pulled a chair out onto the balcony and sat there in the downpour and sang every song of thanksgiving and gratitude that he could recall, and then started in on the rest. He sang until he was hoarse under the gentle gray sky, his voice rolling over fields where tiny, emerald green shoots were already beginning to unfurl.

Neither of us could get enough of that water, the deliciously cool air after so many weeks of feverish heat. Bhagan would lie naked in the very fountain, saying he loved to feel the big drops drumming on his back. We filled the bath with that good cold water and laid about in it too, taking turns washing each other with perfumed soap and splashing like boys until we were both thoroughly chilled. Laughing and drying each other, we would slide under the blankets and make love for hours.

When he held my face in his big hands and wrapped his legs around me, as I held him close and slowly entered him, his look of utter contentment made warm honey rise in my chest.

Later, as he ran his hands up my sides and slid gently inside me, it felt like coming home all over again.

 

As soon as it stopped raining quite so hard and the flooding receded enough, our villagers all set out for home. This also had the air of a festival as they travelled through a country washed clean; I don’t think I had ever seen the sky so blue, before or since. The very air was like a fine cool wine, everything glittering with diamond dewdrops. We watched them go from the balcony, our arms raised in farewell.

Thanks to Bhagan’s quick decision and good thinking, the people were not sorely harmed by privation. Working day and night, the farmers with the help of everyone in the villages managed to get a second crop set out just in time. Priests toiled along with tanners and potters and midwives, working the soil and casting the precious seeds, but all would eat because of their hard effort. The rains came just in time to save the orchards; the fruit trees were sorely withered but not yet dead, and in time they recovered fully. And when the sickness inevitably came, the illness that had killed so many when Bhagan was young, it found no purchase to roar through the villages like before. Thanks to him, the people were well-fed and strong and healthy, and the fevers guttered and died, unable to spread. We lost very few to it that year. Just as Bhagan swore to never doubt me again when we were at Durgesh, I swore too, to never doubt him again. He might have just saved us all.

That evening, after we saw the last of the villagers off, we laid together on the cool tile of the porch and listened to Bhagan’s little birds settling in for the night against the gurgling backdrop of the fountain. We lay there with our fingers entwined and watched the stars turn over our heads, like a black cloth covered with diamond dust, we could see so many. Bhagan stroked my fingers and told me all about how things fared in his garden, chattering happily about how he thought the jasmine might be ready to bloom again soon, it was covered with white buds, and how the mangoes were starting well, and whatever thought came into his head at the moment.

I sighed with contentment.

When we finally went to bed I held him to me and was able to savor his warmth, the velvety feeling of his skin against mine in the cool night. We relished it, cocooned together in a silk blanket and surrounded by the soft night sounds of the insects out in the garden, the gurgle of the fountain. I fell asleep with his strong arms about me, mine about him, and the feel of his gentle breaths against my skin. My heart’s home.

 

The years that followed were good ones for us, years of peace. A few weeks later, the family from Naccarapur that had taken shelter under our very blankets in the courtyard made the journey back to the Palace. Only this time, they came with laughter and good cheer, for they led a young female elephant as a gift for Bhagan. They had decorated her gaily with paint and ribbons as if at a festival, and he greeted her with tears in his eyes, their heartfelt thanks in his ears. And in time, she helped to rebuild his herd when she bore a little calf from Hurli that followed Bhagan everywhere, a turn of her little trunk about his wrist just as her father would do.

Of course, life was not always so pleasant, but though we knew hardships in plenty the savage droughts never came again, never like that time early in our marriage. And many years later, in the fullness of time, I took my place on the throne of Kyrat. That day, Bhagan lifted the Amulet of the King from around his own neck and placed it on mine, and the weight of it was immense. But that was all right, for he kissed me as he did it and then stood beside me, so that I didn’t have to carry that weight all alone.

 

But I think perhaps that should be another story for another day.

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments/ideas/suggestions welcome!


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